Short Course - Energy Harvesting and Wireless Technologies for Flexible Bioelectronics

Monday 15 February 2027

Cripps Court Conference Centre, Magdalene College, Cambridge, UK

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COURSE FOCUS

This course will discuss energy harvesting, wireless power transfer and wireless communication technologies for flexible and wearable/implantable bioelectronics, with emphasis on their underlying physical mechanisms, functional materials and integration into soft biomedical systems.

Next-generation bioelectronics increasingly require operation without bulky batteries, rigid electronics or transcutaneous wiring. Energy can instead be generated locally from mechanical, thermal, biochemical or electromagnetic sources, or supplied wirelessly through inductive, capacitive, ultrasonic or radiofrequency links. The course will examine the materials and transduction mechanisms enabling these approaches, including piezoelectric, triboelectric, thermoelectric, photovoltaic and biofuel-cell technologies, and their compatibility with flexible and stretchable substrates.

Wireless powering and communication strategies will be discussed alongside practical constraints including power density, transmission distance, tissue absorption, antenna/coil miniaturisation and mechanical integration. Examples of commercial and translational systems will illustrate how these principles are implemented in real wearable sensors, wireless electrophysiology platforms and implantable devices.

The final section will address a frequently underestimated requirement for autonomous bioelectronics: long-term reliability. Failure mechanisms, accelerated ageing, mechanical fatigue, biofluid ingress, packaging and thin-film encapsulation strategies will be discussed, connecting energy autonomy with stable long-term operation.

COURSE OUTLINE

Monday 15 February 2027

13:00 – 13:30 Registration

13:30 Course begins

Introduction: towards autonomous flexible bioelectronics

  • From wired to wireless and battery-free bioelectronics

  • Wearable, epidermal and implantable systems

  • Power density, energy density and duty cycle

  • Energy requirements of:

    • Biosensors

    • Electrophysiology and neural recording

    • Electrical stimulation

    • Drug-delivery systems

    • Wireless telemetry

  • Matching energy source, storage and device consumption

Energy-harvesting mechanisms and materials

  • Piezoelectric energy harvesting

  • Triboelectric energy harvesting

  • Thermoelectric energy harvesting

  • Other biointegrated energy sources

  • Energy storage and power management 

Wireless powering of flexible and implantable systems

  • Near-field versus far-field approaches

  • Inductive coupling

    • Resonance and coupling coefficient

    • Flexible coils and miniaturisation

  • Capacitive coupling

  • RF and electromagnetic powering

    • Flexible antennas

    • NFC/RFID concepts

  • Ultrasonic wireless power transfer

    • Piezoelectric receivers

    • Acoustic propagation through tissue

  • Optical powering

  • Tissue absorption, heating and safety

  • Choosing the appropriate wireless-power mechanism

Wireless communication and telemetry

  • NFC and RFID

  • Bluetooth Low Energy

  • Backscatter communication

  • Ultrasonic communication

  • Data rate versus power consumption

  • Antennas and interconnects under bending/stretching

  • Closed-loop sensing–communication–actuation

  • Choosing the appropriate wireless-communication protocol

From mechanisms to real systems: industrial demonstrations and case studies

Stability and reliability of autonomous bioelectronics

  • Why energy autonomy does not guarantee long-term autonomy

  • Principal failure mechanisms:

  • Reliability under bending, stretching and cyclic loading

  • Accelerated ageing in physiological environments

  • Stability of wireless links and power-transfer efficiency

  • Battery and energy-storage degradation

  • Packaging and encapsulation

·       Rigid versus flexible packaging

·       Silicone/elastomer encapsulation

·       Thin-film encapsulations

·       Hermeticity and water-vapour transmission

·       Electrical/electrochemical methods for detecting encapsulation failure

·       Designing simultaneously for power, flexibility, biointegration and lifetime

Conclusions: designing autonomous bioelectronic systems

  • Selecting the appropriate harvesting/powering mechanism

  • Materials, transduction, power management, wireless link, application

  • Trade-offs between miniaturisation, power, communication distance and lifetime

  • Future directions: battery-free, self-powered and closed-loop bioelectronics

17:00 Course ends

COURSE LEADER

Dr Eng. Massimo Mariello, Senior Postdoctoral Research Associate
University of Oxford, UK

Dr Massimo Mariello holds a Bachelor of Science (Industrial Engineering, October 2015), a Master of Science (October 2017) and PhD (May 2021) in Materials Engineering and Nanotechnology at the University of Salento and Italian Institute of Technology (Italy). He worked on flexible nanogenerators based on piezoelectric and triboelectric materials for mechanical energy harvesting and biosensing.  As postdoctoral scientist at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland, 2021-2023), he worked on implantable neuroprostheses and thin-film encapsulations. He developed a universal method for assessing quantitatively and accurately the reliability of barrier coatings and bioelectronic devices, based on the biodegradation of Magnesium thin-film permeability sensors. His research focuses on micro-devices, soft (bio)materials, neural interfaces, translational medicine. He is currently senior postdoctoral research associate at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBME) (Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford). He is investigating laser-micropatterned advanced bioelectronics and neural interfaces for stimulation and drug delivery. He is member of the Italian Professional Body of Engineers, Standard-Bearer of Labour of the Italian Republic and Enterprise and Innovation Fellow of the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division of the University of Oxford.

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